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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

A Compliant Threshold Acceleration Sensor Integrated With Radio Frequency Identifiable Tags, Benjamin L. Todd Jul 2008

A Compliant Threshold Acceleration Sensor Integrated With Radio Frequency Identifiable Tags, Benjamin L. Todd

Theses and Dissertations

Fully compliant bistable mechanisms have been proposed to be used as threshold accelerometers. The advantages to using these devices are that they require no external power to operate and maintain their sensing state. Using this characteristic the devices can be integrated with passive radio frequency identification tags (RFID). This allows for the sensing package to lay dormant with no maintenance needed until the sensor is read by the RFID reader. This thesis presents a successfully fabricated and integrated threshold accelerometer with a passive RFID tag. This in turn has been successfully read with an RFID reader and shown to act …


Vibration Analysis Of Piezoelectric Microcantilever Sensors, Amin Salehi-Khojin May 2008

Vibration Analysis Of Piezoelectric Microcantilever Sensors, Amin Salehi-Khojin

All Dissertations

The main objective of this dissertation is to comprehensively analyze vibration characteristics of microcantilever-based sensors with application to ultra small mass detection and low dimensional materials characterization. The first part of this work focuses on theoretical developments and experimental verification of piezoelectric microcantilevers, commercially named Active Probes, which are extensively used in most today's advanced Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) systems. Due to special geometry and configuration of Active Probes, especially multiple jump discontinuities in their cross-section, a general and comprehensive framework is introduced for forced vibration and modal analysis of discontinuous flexible beams. More specifically, a general formulation is obtained …


Incorporation Of Polydiacetylene Sensors Into Commercial Polymers, Jennifer Kauffman May 2008

Incorporation Of Polydiacetylene Sensors Into Commercial Polymers, Jennifer Kauffman

All Dissertations

Polydiacetylenes (PDAs) exhibit a chromatic response to solvents, temperature, strain and other environmental perturbations. When formed in a solid-state polymerization, the backbone of the polymer is planar and continuous π-overlap is observed. However, when the PDA backbone is distorted by an outside force the extended conjugation is interrupted and an optical shift from blue to red occurs. By exploiting the PDAs properties within polymer systems, smart fibers and films have been created that enhance the original intention of the host. Under this umbrella, a strain sensitive polydiacetylene-polyurethane blend was created using 3 and 4-butoxycarbonylmethylurethane PDA and a medical grade polyurethane, …